IC 2944 (The Running Chicken Nebula) in Centaurus

[Octane]

And, I'm done with this one.

It's not perfect, but, it'll do for this year's effort.

60 hours narrowband, 8 hours LRGB stars.

I tried to be smart and do the LRGB star blending in PixInsight. I need time to master it; I'm too sick at the moment to redo it all in Photoshop.

Larger version available here (http://octane2.ddns.net:81/astro/ic2944.html).

Cheers!

H

[RickS]

That looks very nice, H!

[DJT]

I like that. Nicely done.:thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Excellent shot H!
It is in fact one of the very few shots where I can distinctly make out the chicken!

[astronobob]

Lovely image, H, grouse widefield picking up the GC aswell, !
My nana always suggested 'chicken' soup when down crook, it was a dead chook tho, Lol :-)
Get well soon !

[strongmanmike]

Overall an excellent image Humayun, its crisp and the colour looks good and best of all, the whole damn chicken is well shown! b-Gurk! :D

Mike

[atalas]

Stars tight as a fishes butt,detail colour looks good, and contrast is nice and lots of signal in a great field....awesome :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

That's excellent, Humayun! Rich and detailed. The cluster adds a lot. You've almost converted us to adding RGB stars to a narrowband image - it worked very well.

60 hours: a long time at the helm. A great result.

Best,
Mike and Trish

[Martin Pugh]

A nice wide vista of this field, with good colour.

As for tight stars....well what do you expect, you have an FSQ!

Nice job
Cheers
Martin

[Andy01]

Lovely image, great natural look to it and the stars are amazing :2thumbs:
Very nice piece :thumbsup:

PS: As mentioned elsewhere, I still reckon it looks like Ja-Ja Binks!

[niharika]

:eyepop:68 hrs
Lovely image

[marc4darkskies]

Beautiful field and lovely colour H! A great image! :thumbsup:

With 68 hours of integration though, isn't there some more depth you could tease out?

[Retrograde]

Yes that looks exquisite. Great work!

[topheart]

Wow!

A beautiful deep wide field image!!

Congratulations!
Cheers,
Tim

[Slawomir]

A spectacular image Humayun :thumbsup:

Emission nebula, Bok globules, star cluster, planetary nebula...so much to explore!

[Octane]

Rick,

Thanks, mate. Your ColorMask script is a life saver. :)



Thanks, David. :)



Colin,

Cheers, bud. It looks even better rotated 180 degrees, in my opinion. Perhaps I should have presented it in that way for more of compositional- impact.



Bob,

Haha, thanks. I'm much better now, thanks. :)



Mike,

Thanks, mate. Glad you think so. :)



H

[Octane]

Louie,

Thanks, so much, mate. Praise from you means the world to me. :)



Mike & Trish,

Thanks, guys. :)

Give it a go! I've got lots of practicing to do to get the blend perfect, too.



Martin,

Thank you, sir!

And, yes, the FSQ-106N is a dream. I won't be parting with this one!



Andy,

Glad you like the stars. :D

Sure does look like that character! :)



Raki,

Cheers, mate. I don't do things by halves. :)



Cheers, guys.

H

[Octane]

Marc,

Thanks for the kind words. :)

I suspect there is more that can be brought out. I created a synthetic luminance with the three channel masters. All added at 1/3rd signal from each. I, however, did no further processing on that synthetic luminance. There is so much data contributed by the hydrogen alpha channel. In actual fact, to get the colours to start to balance out properly, I had to add the SII and OIII at 10 times the ratio of hydrogen alpha. I might have another stab at it and process the synthetic luminance before adding the other channels.



Pete,

Thank you. :)



Tim,

Much appreciated! :)



Suavi,

Thanks a lot, mate!

It is a truly beautiful region of the sky. There's a considerable amount of dust on the outskirts, too. I'll do a mosaic when it's back in a favourable position.



Thanks a lot, everyone!

H

[gregbradley]

That's an excellent result Humi.
Did the image progress much after say 15 hours though?
With noise reducing at.the.square root of the increase in time you get rapidly.diminishing returns. Some objects that are super faint seem to come alive
But a relatively bright nebula may not progress much.

I've never done that long on a single image so I am curious if there were benefits.
Greg

[multiweb]

Massive field H. Very cool. :thumbsup:

[ausastronomer]

Really nice image H.

This is one of my favourite visual targets in a decent aperture scope.

Cheers,
John B

[Ryderscope]

Nice work Humayun. You should be happy with the result.

[Octane]

Greg,

Thanks, mate.

I'm going to reprocess it and I'll do a comparison with hour-by-hour integration stacks. I'll report back then.

I had to integrate SII and OIII at 10x more than hydrogen alpha. After linear fitting SII and OIII to hydrogen alpha, so that the median background values across the three masters was the same, and stacking them, the whole image was just green. Pushing SII and OIII x10, returned the colours to somewhat normal, but, in the process, I've lost all the delicate hydrogen alpha that's spread across this field. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to show that while maintaining the presence of the other two channels. I'll give it a go, though.



Marc,

Cheers, mate. :)



John,

Thanks, mate. Admittedly, I've never looked at this through a scope. I'll have to give it a go. :)



Rodney,

Thanks, mate. I'm hoping a reprocess will deliver even better goods. :)



Thanks again, all.

H